Cheney's assassination wing - where's the outrage?

[Image of Seymour Hersh from citizenbfk.wordpress.com]

There hasn't been very much about Dick Cheney's assassination wing in the mainstream media. That is a conundrum. As Seymour Hersh described it, this assassination wing was engaged in killing people the Bush administration didn't like or thought might be anti-American or terrorists and as such was a strictly illegal, unconstitutional, clandestine operation.

Where's the outrage? Have we become so numb to assaults, not only on the basis for our life together as Americans represented by our Constitution, but also with regard to basic human decency, that we no longer care?


Amy Goodman, writing for Democracy Now and AlterNet discusses this assassination wing as described by Seymour Hersh and John Hannah, Cheney's national security adviser.

Hersh claims that with the authority of George W. Bush, U.S. special forces (commandos) have "been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving."

When questioned as to the accuracy of this information, Hannah said, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer:

"There is clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, inter-agency process ... that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States, or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to the troops in the field and in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true."

Blitzer asked Hannah if he thought this was "totally constitutional, totally legal, to go out and find these guys and to whack 'em.""

Hannah responded affirmatively, reiterating the notion that we are at war with "al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and on that Pakistani border ... [and] our troops have the authority to go after and capture and kill the enemy, including the leadership of the enemy."


Hersh, speaking with Amy Goodman, calls this kind of irrational rationale for what it is: horsehockey (although he didn't use those words). Hersh noted that in the 1970s, President Ford signed an executive order banning such activities. "It's not only contrary -- it's illegal," said Hersh. "It's immoral, it's counterproductive."

Hannah was being disingenuous. The assassination squads were not "troops" in the field of battle, but well-trained special forces who went into, not only the Middle East, but Central and South America.

"And the idea," said Hersh, "that the American president would think he has the constitutional power or the legal right to tell soldiers not engaged in immediate combat to go out and find people based on lists and execute them is just amazing to me."


It should be amazing to every American! It should be more than amazing, it should be absolutely reprehensible for it goes against our consititution and everywhere we have stood for as a nation.

So, again: where's the outrage? Where's the MSM? Why haven't Bush and Cheney been arrested and thrown in jail? They're not above the law.

Or, are they?


Read the entire article here.